Wonderful Worms

Earthworms don’t have eyes, ears or noses, and instead of lungs, they breathe through their skin. But more than just learning some fascinating facts, bringing live earthworms into the classroom gives children an up close encounter with a gentle, harmless animal.

I recently brought earthworms to Yvonne Fisher’s classroom at Dawson Orman Education Center. After reading a story and practicing moving like earthworms during circle time, we spread out some newspaper and let them crawl across the table. The children squealed with delight as they watched the earthworms stretch and squeeze their bodies. Almost every child was willing to pet an earthworm, and most also picked one up and laughed as it tickled their hands.

Earthworms are everywhere and are very beneficial to plants. In one yard of earth, there can be thousands of earthworms!  Go for a walk and hunt for them. Try digging in the dirt or lifting up rocks and leaf litter. Look on the sidewalk after a heavy rain and model good stewardship by returning them to some dirt where they can dig back underground. Most of all, let children know that they don’t have to be afraid of something just because it moves!

 A word about earthworm care:

Remember that they breathe through their skin and need a damp environment; so keep a spray bottle handy, but avoid letting them “swim” in water. They can drown too! They eat dirt and decaying leaves, so if you plan on keeping them a few days, be sure to provide them with food.

 Literature connections:

• Wonderful Worms by Linda Glaser
• Garden Wigglers by Nancy Loewen
• An Earthworm’s Life by John Himmelman
• Earthworms by Claire Llewellyn and Barrie Watts

The Great Backyard Bird Count

The Great Backyard Bird Count begins this Friday. What a perfect way to observe nature with your kids and participate in a national science project. Just last week, I noticed a huge number of American Robins in my backyard. There were hundreds of them, many more than I usually see, so I researched online to find that many robins migrate. While some may stay in an area all winter long, most move in flocks place to place to find tree and shrub berries that ripen in late winter.

Science is that simple with children. I observed something in nature, had a question about it and looked for the answer. Answers can come from many different sources. Check a book out of the library or keep watching those birds to see if you can come up with your own answers. The important thing is to keep watching nature with your children and talking to them about what they see. With spring coming, the animals outside are all busy getting ready, and the plants are starting to awaken. I just saw my first flower yesterday!

How can I participate? All you have to do is identify and count the birds in your backyard over a 15 minute time period and log them into the website (www.birdsource.org/gbbc). Details, instructions and bird activity ideas can also be found on the website.

Why does it help scientists for us to count birds? Birds move over vast areas and can do so with great speed.  This makes tracking them difficult for a small group of scientists, but if they have help of people across the USA, they have more data to work with and can gain an understanding of our bird populations. This bird count is done every year, so data can be compared year to year to study the effects of weather, diseases, migration patterns and timing, as well as how populations in rural areas compare to suburban areas.

Going on a Nature Walk

Through PNC Grow Up Great with Science, I recently visited the preschool classes of Friends School. I came to share a backyard ecosystem I set up with dirt, rocks, decaying leaves, worms, slugs and pill bugs.  (Pill Bugs are great animals to bring into a classroom, and I’ll write more about them at a later date.) The children had a wonderful time lifting up the rocks and leaves, watching the pill bugs move and examining everything through their magnifiers, but what I want to share with you today was what I encountered after the activity, when I stayed to go on a nature walk with Blaine Hicks’ classroom.

A simple walk around the school provided a myriad of learning moments. As soon as we were out the door, Blaine stopped the children and had them use their different senses to observe the environment (listening for birds, tasting and smelling the air, feeling the roughness of the brick), and as we walked along the sidewalk, the children were encouraged to look for insects under rocks, to notice the dew on the grass and to wonder about what creatures we might find in the mulch. A 15 minute walk, that totaled less than a city block, yielded an orange and black beetle, flowers in different stages of life and decay, a tiny millipede, miniature pine cones, an army of ants, wild strawberries, clover, a feather, mushrooms and a pill bug. Children gingerly carried their findings, and every step was full of wonder about what we would find next. Blaine didn’t fill the walk with facts, information and instructions.  She explored with them; asking questions, modeling curiosity, letting the children discover their world at their own pace and teaching them how to look closely.